TSPDIF sound
HDMI sound to my television sounds fine, but the digital out sounds like I am missing the center channel. Basses and ambient noises are loud, but voices are barely discernible. The receiver is a 5.1 receiver with two speakers and a sub hooked up currently. FWIW - I have played the same .mkv files on my Popcorn Hour A-100 hooked to the same receiver with a coaxial digital connection and the sound is fine.

Since you don't actually have a center channel hooked up, it's not too much of a surprise that it sounds like you are missing the center channel. I'm guessing you can probably change the mode of your receiver to the proper setting so you're trying to play 2.1 instead of 5.1. In the receiver's speaker setup menu do you have the center channel turned off?

I haven't looked into the drivers/settings for the SPDIF, but there may be a option in there to set it to output 2.0/2.1 instead of 5.1 as well.

I currently have a mine connected via SPDIF/optical to a 5.1 receiver but am also only using two speakers and a sub and it sounds fine. I'll see if I can check my settings later.

I'm having a sound problem of my own. I have the 5450 GPU and prefer to use an HDMI connection for sound.

The problem is it keeps flaking out. Under the sound settings, the ATI (HDMI) will frequently appear as disconnected and I'll get no sound over HDMI. It then defaults to the SPDIF audio card/driver. Sometimes it will come back after a reboot but not always.

For now I've gotten around it by running an optical cable to my receiver, but I'd rather have working audio over HDMI.

I just got the machine last night, so I have not reinstalled the OS yet. I'm still up in the air about it. I had some issues with getting the ATI Catalyst Control Center to open, but after installing a bunch of updates and reinstalling the Catalyst Control Center it began to work.

Also, when I enter Windows Media Center, I do not have the Netflix or Internet TV tiles. I'm still troubleshooting that one, but hopefully I'll figure out the issue tonight. After doing to some searching, I've found a few suggestions for solutions. If anyone here has had this problem, feel free to chime in and let me know how you resolved it.

Thx, Robbk.
I got my 'shipped' confirmation this morning. Hopefully, I'll have it by mid next week.

Hi guys, I have a question. Is the Dell Zino 410 capable enough to be used as a desktop replacement for light to medium workloads? Apart from being used as a HTPC, I'd be curious to know how it performs (or how it can handle) applications such as Word, Excel, Photoshop, etc? Thanks for your help.

Hi guys, I have a question. Is the Dell Zino 410 capable enough to be used as a desktop replacement for light to medium workloads? Apart from being used as a HTPC, I'd be curious to know how it performs (or how it can handle) applications such as Word, Excel, Photoshop, etc? Thanks for your help.

As an update to my first post. The Dell tech came out yesterday and installed a new motherboard and the HD 5450 graphics card along with bringing the correct Dell Media Center remote. The IR sensor was already installed in the unit.

FYI for all those curious about the graphics upgradability....the HD5450 was installed in a (MMX?) slot on the bottom of the motherboard. I can only assume this has the potential to be upgraded in the future. The new motherboard came with the integrated graphics so by installing the HD5450 it became the default graphics adaptor in the bios.

So for just over $500 I have a Quad Core Blu-ray Zino 410 with 8GB RAM, integrated remote control and HD5450.

I didn't have time last night to put it back into my home theater system. I might replace the hard drive with an SSD drive (anyone else out there done this on a Zino??)

Thanks to everyone for all the helpful information about the Zino. I'm looking to get the Zino soon but I was planning on waiting until Dell includes service pack 1 for Windows 7 as part of the recovery partition.

For my last PC, I bought a Dell before any service packs came out for Windows Vista. I hate it when I have to reinstall the OS and it takes forever and a day to download everything from Windows Update (updated drivers, then SP1, then SP2, etc).

Does anyone know if Dell has started to include Windows 7 SP1 with the Zino?

Got my refurb Zino yesterday and so far I'm very impressed with it! Got WMC up and running with an HD Homerun for clear QAM channels. Waiting for a USB tuner to come today that I'll hook up to my antenna.

After getting it setup I didn't have too much time to play around, but did check out a blu-ray and a region 3 DVD (to test out some region free software that I installed) and all looked very good. I still have some calibration to do tonight, but out of the box it wasn't bad at all.

Given that this will take the place of a DVR, my PS3, my region free DVD Player, and an internet streaming box it's quite a deal! My entertainment center is going to look empty with just a receiver, the zino, and an xbox 360.

I did run into one issue, the 2nd time I booted it up the Zino showed no device hooked up to HDMI for audio output. It had worked fine the first time I started it, so I just rebooted. That fixed the problem, but if that crops up with any regularity it could be a big annoyance.

I did run into one issue, the 2nd time I booted it up the Zino showed no device hooked up to HDMI for audio output. It had worked fine the first time I started it, so I just rebooted. That fixed the problem, but if that crops up with any regularity it could be a big annoyance.

It happens to mine regularly and it is a big annoyance, so much so that I started using SPDIF instead.

Hello all. I am currently looking thru the threads for an answer or help, but in the meantime, I thought I'd post the question here too .... any help would be greatly appreciated.

I had our HTPC working great using Vista and XBMC. I have 2 external hard drives hooked to the pc that hold my movie files. Everything played flawlessly. No issues.

Then we replaced that setup with a Zino last week. I love the Zino as a whole, seems like a great machine. I moved the 2 hard drives over, set up the XBMC and it began importing the movie files just like before. All seemed great. I even watched a couple movies that night before shutting down.

But the next day, I turned the pc on to watch a movie and noticed that some movies weren't showing up like they did the night before. Other titles show up but say the files are "missing" and tell me to "delete the title from the list".

I was completely bumfuggled. Now its been a week of this and nothing I do seems to fix it, so maybe someone here can help me out:

1 - Files from drive 1 show up and can be seen and played without issue. But on drive 2, files are automatically getting locked out by the pc and become un-accessible. Those are the movies that say "missing" or "delete from list" whenever we try to access them.

2 - So I go to that hard drive and manually unlock each file one at a time. But when I close the folder and try to play a movie, the system RE-LOCKs them again. WTH??

All I can figure is that Windows 7 has a setting somewhere that is causing this and a week later, I cant find it. I read that I should set up "users" or "sharing" but that didnt work either, Im still back in the same predicament.

I am begging for direction here. If there is anyone that had this problem and fixed it, please chime in. Or anyone that can tell me what to do next, I'd appreciate it greatly. I need to know what to do to fix this, to ensure that all the files on these hard drives remain accessible to everyone at all times. This system is useless if I cant watch movies on it. So whats next?? Thanks again.

Just got my Zino 410 (base wireless model - no upgrades).
Currently in the process of making the restore discs. There doesn't appear to be a lot of bloatware so I'll probably be keeping the OS. Sound over HDMI works perfectly out of the box.
I had the same scaling issue others here have mentioned (50" Samsung plasma). To fix it I went to CCC, adv. mode, click the 'graphics' dropdown in the top left and select 'desktops and displays', R-click on currently activated display under 'please select a display' at bottom left, select configure, go to the scaling tab, move the slider all the way to the right.

I did run into one issue, the 2nd time I booted it up the Zino showed no device hooked up to HDMI for audio output. It had worked fine the first time I started it, so I just rebooted. That fixed the problem, but if that crops up with any regularity it could be a big annoyance.

I have also experienced it once in a while. I usually turn my receiver off and on instead of the Zino (this is much faster than rebooting the Zino). This causes the Zino to re-discover the HDMI and everything works fine.

I am pleasently surprised with the speed, power, and quality of this system so far. I'm able to play a virtual 3D fish tank and media player 3D visuals, with music, without any stuttering whatsoever. I am watching hulu movies and other web media just fine. This system is not, by any means, a powerhouse, but it seems to have just enough umpf for what I want it to do. I'll be testing high def video next.

Check out ftp://ftp.alceryes.com for a little video demo of performance so far. You must uncheck 'passive ftp' in IE to log in.
UN - ftpdrop
PW - 1amFtp1
Video is from an older iPhone so not the best quality.

I have lost HDMI sound twice during the uninstallation of unnecessary Dell software. This may or may not be a coincidence - we'll see. It comes out of sleep perfectly with audio and video working. I haven't updated any drivers yet and probably won't if everything continues to work well.

Had mine almost a week now and I love it more and more. Everything is setup just how I wanted it and all my media plays well. A lot of what I need integrates right into WMC, I only wish I could do that with all the online media I use. I broke down and bought a rii mini keyboard/touchpad because using my iphone with air mouse just wasn't working out for me. It was annoying to have to wake up the app on my phone every time I wanted to do something with the mouse or keyboard.

Heat
I have my zino in an entertainment cabinet and it was getting hot. I added a USB fan (Thermaltake brand 80mm) and it seems to be doing the trick so far. Temps are still warm, but not borderline too hot like they were. I might be adding more/larger holes to the back of the cabinet to increase the exhaust flow.

Sound
I ended up tweaking settings in AC3 filter and Shark007 to get spdif to pass through digital to my receiver (over optical connection not HDMI). It was working for everything (recorded tv, .mkv movies, dvds, blu-rays) except web content on Netflix and Youtube. I switched to HDMI out (connected to the TV) and now we are just watching content with the sound playing through the TV. This works for now, but eventually I will either need to figure it out or at least get a receiver with HDMI inputs.

Overall I like the Zino a lot. It's plenty fast for normal office work. We use ours for Quickbooks and a few other business items and it works great. I really miss the multi-record QAM capabilities of NPVR. I recently installed NPVR on the Zino and I'm debating running a QAM tuner in NPVR and an ATSC tuner in WMC. I'm fickle. I like the fast forward capability of WMC for recorded TV, but just about everything else is as good or better in NPVR. Torn on what to do.

Does anyone else have issues with the dell remote? during the first few minutes, in hulu or MCE, if i hit the up button once, it keeps going up like i'm pressing the button, etc. I don't think it's the remote, as i can move it out of range, but the computer keeps going. I couldn't find any settings or anything to tweek. I was planning on calling dell, but we know what fun that is. Figured i'd check to see if there's any others having issues like this.

I am looking to get an HTPC and the Dell Zino looks like a great place to start.

Currently I have a WHS filled with DVD rips (480i/p passthrough in mpeg format), Bluray rips (1080p passthroughs in M2TS format) and TV shows in a variety of formats (some MKV some avi some mpeg etc....)

I have done a lot of testing on my main computer and I have come to the conclusion that I want to run WMC7 w/ media browser to play all my media from the WHS, Hulu desktop, DVD & Bluray from optical, and other internet videos (maybe from Boxee).

That said, which version of the Dell Zino 410 would be acceptable?? I don't particularly want to spend $600+ on the quad core version. Would the Dual-core with discrete graphics card be able to handle the 1080p streaming and/or optical playback??

Another consideration I had was with the Boxee Box, if I sacrifice physical disc viewing, would the Boxee Box be able to handle all the 1080p content I have?

I am looking to get an HTPC and the Dell Zino looks like a great place to start.

Currently I have a WHS filled with DVD rips (480i/p passthrough in mpeg format), Bluray rips (1080p passthroughs in M2TS format) and TV shows in a variety of formats (some MKV some avi some mpeg etc....)

I have done a lot of testing on my main computer and I have come to the conclusion that I want to run WMC7 w/ media browser to play all my media from the WHS, Hulu desktop, DVD & Bluray from optical, and other internet videos (maybe from Boxee).

That said, which version of the Dell Zino 410 would be acceptable?? I don't particularly want to spend $600+ on the quad core version. Would the Dual-core with discrete graphics card be able to handle the 1080p streaming and/or optical playback??

Another consideration I had was with the Boxee Box, if I sacrifice physical disc viewing, would the Boxee Box be able to handle all the 1080p content I have?

Thanks!!

according to the anandtech review, the quad core with the graphics card had a hard time with 1080p:

Quote:

Here is where the downer comes in. While going through our media streamer test suite, we found that many 1080p60 H264 clips wouldn't play properly. We had protracted communication with both Dell and AMD, and it was one of the main sources of delay with respect to the publishing of this review. We waited quite a bit to see whether driver updates would fix the issue, but release after release went by without any improvement in the situation. After Catalyst 11.1, we gave up.

The short story is that the HD 5400 series (Cedar based) is qualified for content up to 1080p 24fps only. At that format all the video quality features are available with the exception of mosquito noise reduction and deblocking. Anything beyond that format is not qualified for the Mobility 5450. Even though some instances of that format (1080p30 or 1080p60 H264) may play back, it's not guaranteed that it will be smooth.

All in all, the Mobility 5450 falls short in its support for certain encodes when compared with its midrange and high end cousins, as well as the nVidia 4xx GPUs and Intel HD Graphics.

I'm a little confused by the 1080P 24 thing as well. Currently my HTPC uses an i3-530cpu on a Gigabyte H55M-usb3 MB. All my blu rays are stored full quality on my network in folder structure. I use TMT 3 to play my movies. My tv can only do 1980x1080P 60. Right now I don't have any problems watching blu rays at all.

With the Zino 410 would I still be able to watch my blu rays smoothy or would it stutter? i would have thought that the 410 would handle blu ray content better than a standalone i3-530cpu.

Geez. I am looking to buy another htpc to get HD audio bit streaming so i have been watching this forum. Anyway, my lenovo q700 plays 1080p/60/24 bluray iso's from my whs with 1/3 the horsepower of these zinos and integrated hdmi graphics. CPU cores hover around 25% when playing a bluray. Sounds like these zinos may not be much of an upgrade and I may be better off building my own.

Did anyone order the on-site warranty upgrade from the dell outlet with their Zino? I swear it was an option for like $6 to upgrade, but now when I call Dell (a week and a half after I received it) they want $132 to upgrade to the on-site warranty.

That said, which version of the Dell Zino 410 would be acceptable?? I don't particularly want to spend $600+ on the quad core version. Would the Dual-core with discrete graphics card be able to handle the 1080p streaming and/or optical playback??

Thanks!!

I have the Zino 410 with the dual core processor, discrete graphics card, and the blu-ray drive. I have no problems at all watching blu-ray videos. If I recall, the processor runs at about 20-30% usage during blu-ray playback.

However, my television is only 720p, so I cannot speak for blu-ray playback at 1080p.

The AnandTech article does point out that it doesn't seem to handle 1080p 60fps videos very well though. I don't play any 1080p 60fps content, so that doesn't affect me.

Here is the AnandTech quote...

"The short story is that the HD 5400 series (Cedar based) is qualified for content up to 1080p 24fps only. At that format all the video quality features are available with the exception of mosquito noise reduction and deblocking. Anything beyond that format is not qualified for the Mobility 5450. Even though some instances of that format (1080p30 or 1080p60 H264) may play back, it's not guaranteed that it will be smooth."

Did anyone order the on-site warranty upgrade from the dell outlet with their Zino? I swear it was an option for like $6 to upgrade, but now when I call Dell (a week and a half after I received it) they want $132 to upgrade to the on-site warranty.

I did - it was $6. If it's any help here are the warranty lines from my invoice:

Just another quick update on my experience with the Zino 410 from the Outlet.

After Dell made good on upgrading my unit to what was advertised on the Outlet page....I got a follow-up call from a Dell manager (in India) who asked what my experience was. I told him the only complaint was being bounced around on the phone for two hours before I finally got the problem addressed.

As a good faith satisfaction offer...her sent me all of the re-install discs for free and also sent a Dell wireless keyboard/mouse ($55) to go with Zino at no charge! I'm a happy camper now!!

I haven't had time to set up the Zino yet.... it is still sitting in the box. I am changing a few things in my home theater gear and am piecing together a Windows Home Server for movie storage.